I liked FFXI for what it was (a lot of what nasomi wants in a game to be honest) but I didn't bother with more than half of the quests in the game because the rewards weren't worthwhile. I didn't like the extreme grind the game had at the onset, luckily it was toned down.

Honestly, if FFXIV were to take exp away from all quests aside from the main story quests, class quests and company quests and replace the SP rewards from the other quests with items/money worth the time of doing the quests... I'd have no issues with that sort of system.
However, I do believe that there should be many more story and company quests than there currently are. Far more.
Just as is the case with offline Final Fantasy games, you should be able to progress to the appropriate level to do story content simply by going through said story content. I can't remember ever having to stop and kill random minions to level up to beat any offline FF game. There's always enough baddies to fight going from point A to point B. All these MMOs need is an incentive to fight them rather than to just rush right past em straight to point B and an incentive to group up with your fellow players when doing the story quests. Maybe even a public party option like Rift has. There's a lot about Rift I didn't like, but what I did like was the ease of grouping up with folks who had the same objective as you and not having to worry about competing for quest mobs and the like!
FF offline games only really have any notable sort of grinding at the endgame... why can't the online games be the same way?